


Why We Fight

by JessaLRynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of the whole fiasco with Madame de Pompadour, they stop and have a small domestic.  It's just who they are, it's just what they do. They run, they laugh, they save the world, they argue and believe and have no thought whatsoever that it's his ship and her friend they're arguing about, not their anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why We Fight

**Author's Note:**

> From this prompt for a ficathon on Then Theres Us over at LJ.
> 
> This is why  
> Why we fight  
> Why we lie awake  
> And this is why  
> This is why we fight  
> The Decemberists - This Is Why We Fight
> 
> * * *

In the middle of the whole fiasco with Madame de Pompadour, they stop and have a small domestic. It's just who they are, it's just what they do. They run, they laugh, they save the world, they argue and believe and have no thought whatsoever that it's _his_ ship and _her_ friend they're arguing about, not _their_ anything.  
  
It started with Rose, he thinks, when she moved in to the TARDIS with her quilts on his furniture, rearranging his kitchen. She makes it her home, like he asked her to move in with him, which he supposes he did, so yeah. She makes it impossible, all so quickly, to distinguish hers and his from theirs.  
  
But then, it may have started with him, with "I could save the world but lose you", with saving the woman he loves after all. Well, with watching her save herself, and him too while she's at it, really. They've gone in his head and on his lips from, "The Doctor, and Rose," to, "The-Doctor-and-Rose".  
  
This is them, he realizes, just as he realizes he stood there and whinged because his (insert correct title here)Rose wouldn't let him have a horse. She didn't even consider that she couldn't tell him not to keep a horse on the TARDIS he's had for centuries, anymore than he did.  
  
He wouldn't have kept the horse, of course, because it would have been miserable. It was an absolute non-event taking his time away from being all Time Lordy and impressive, and he did it anyway. It was completely unlike where she'd backed him in the corner and forced him to admit that he would never leave her, that he couldn't. It was still just as dramatic, said every bit as much. The fact that what's his is hers says he meant it when he admitted, "You can spend the rest of your life with me." It confessed that he actually accepted that.  
  
The TARDIS is theirs now, and she has the right to tell him he can't have a horse, because he lives with her just as much as she lives with him, because she's a time traveling alien too, because she saves the world and her companion just like he does, because they're not alone anymore, either one of them. In his hearts and in his head and in his facts, they've bound his huge life to her tiny one, and somehow shrunk neither of them in the process, but instead made both of them so much bigger.  
  
They're more together, better together, the-Doctor-and-Rose, and he thinks he finally understands. This is why they fight: not for the wins but for the knowledge the attempt brings, not for the petty victories and tiny feuds but to come to agreement within the pair of them before facing the world with unified purpose. They fight, not to endanger who they are together but to reassert it, to remind them both, even in the midst of their forgetting, that they have to and will and must consider the other half of them whenever they make choices.  
  
He's lying awake, more sleepless than ever, when all this comes to him. Rose is sleeping on the other side of the door in his wall, in her wall too, the one that's been there since whichever one of them had the first nightmare after they met (he isn't sure he really remembers that right, because he still finds it hard to believe anyone would ever want to comfort him). Maybe she isn't sleeping, actually. He left her on a spaceship for five and a half hours, and then he stood there and lied to her. He doesn't lie to her... well, yes he does, but only when the sheer insurmountable Rose-ness of her is going to get her killed otherwise.  
  
He really should... not apologize, exactly. He's not been so stupid as to really do anything to apologize for, either by human standards (cheating sexually) or Gallifreyan ones (actually, cheating here, too, but socially, meaning replacing Rose in his esteem and acknowledgement, which he has never done). But he deserted her, left her alone, made her think he might not come back, and Rose, oh Rose, she said he had to go, because she's like that, his Rose, she truly is. She's wonderful and caring and compassionate enough to be gentle even with someone she perceives as a threat and a rival. She forgives and she learns and she stretches, and she can't actually play the clavichord, which is a tinny and annoying instrument anyway. (Rose bathes regularly, too, which he might not ought to bring up.)  
  
But he should tell her what he's realized, because it's interesting, and if he doesn't tell her now, he might forget tomorrow or next week, or she might forget, and that won't do. He bounds up from the bed, restless and frantic, now that he's decided. How thick could he get, of course they're the-Doctor-and-Rose, he knew that, he's always known that. They're together now and despite everything that tore and clawed at their them-ness today, they still took time out to prove it with a small, together fight. Well, not fight, not as such. Just a tiff, really. Too small for a dust up, maybe a bit of a to-do? Does it have enough disagreement to qualify as a spat?  
  
He opens the door, still trying to pick exactly the right word. "That fracas today," he announces. "Do you think fracas is the right word? How about squabble? I always thought that sounded more like something that ought to be served with Worchestershire sauce, but if you think it works we can go with it, so..."  
  
Rose, lying flat on her back (and very attractively too, though she manages to do that sort of thing more consistently than anyone he's ever met, really), turns to look at him, and her expression changes too quickly from something he's given no time to read to confusion. "Doctor?" she says, and he smiles, because he can't remember a time when he didn't like the way she says his name. Shame the old one was sealed - she'd only said it that one time, but it sounded right and good and safe in her voice, on her lips, from her mouth... which, incidentally, is looking particularly luscious tonight, if he's anyone to judge, and who better, really?  
  
He offers a tentative, conciliatory smile. "Arthur," he points out. "Today, about Arthur?"  
  
Rose blinks. "I... Arthur?"  
  
"My horse," he points out, in a very carefully selected tone.  
  
"No," Rose replies, almost as if she can't help herself. "Arthur is not your horse. You cannot have a horse. I bet the TARDIS will be completely on my side on this one, what with the grating in the console room, and I grant that you've got rooms and rooms to keep him in, but where could he run and be safe at the same time? You keep explosives in the pantry if someone doesn't watch you. Besides, who'd feed him, and..." She trails off.  
  
The Doctor suspects this is because his grin has been getting absurdly, impossibly wider the entire time she's been explaining. He grins that much more, and it's going to get away without him, one of these days. Like Jackie says, his head's gonna pop right off.  
  
The thought of Jackie sobers him against his will. And he frowns and seriously considers a rather infantile tantrum, because Jackie Tyler can wreck any mood he's got, and she doesn't even have to be here to do it.  
  
"What?" Rose says, warily, and she's looking at him as if he's finally done a few doughnuts 'round the twist for witnesses. Funny she's not edging away from him. Silly, silly, _precious_ girl. Only her.  
  
"The horse. The fight over the horse. It's important. I thought you should know... I sort of hoped you do know. The fight, about Arthur, it's all about you and me, really, and what we are, who we are, nothing to do with Arthur, nothing at all, not that he'd ever really speak to me again, and who could blame him, poor begger, I might've made him a gelding the hard way with that stunt. We just do that, you know, save the world, drink tea, eat chips, get stared at a lot, and argue over horses, because we can, because it's got to be us, you and me, not anyone else, and I for one..."  
  
Rose is sitting up in the bed now, and she snickers, rolls her eyes, holds out a hand to gesture him to get on with his ramble. He can read her gestures. They mean things like sign language to him, the cant of her head ( _what?_ ) or the flicker of her eyebrow ( _seriously, what?_ and also _I watched too much Star Trek coming up_ ) tell him what she's not saying. She's got this walk, for example, that says _don't you wish you weren't an idiot?_ but he forces himself to focus on the here and now. The present, particular gesture means, _"get on with it before your babbling incites my teddy bear to violence"_. Her teddy bear has been known to spontaneously sail across the room and thump the Doctor unerringly in the head, after all.  
  
"I um... I know why we fight."  
  
Rose stares at him for a very, very long moment, and he can see the fire of ages in her eyes, feel the turn of the cosmos around her. She's doing whatever it is she does, where she looks into him so deep that he wonders which one of them is the real telepath. She answers questions, he can see that, like she's having conversations with ghosts he hasn't got yet.  
  
Then, she suddenly smiles, and her tongue is poking out through her teeth, and he's forgiven, and he loves her, and it's so not fair all over the place. He wants to pout, but the part of him that still suspects that cheating might could cover snogging if someone chose to see it that way is gaping for gratitude and jumping for joy in his head while Rose's eyes dance dark sensuality and golden fire at him.  
  
She's moving away from him all the same, and the Doctor is completely confused. Then, Rose lifts the duvet, the blankets from her bed, and she's made room for a skinny Time Lord, at least one without a horse. "So we can make up?" she suggests, and her tone suggests, and her eyes suggest and his bio-physiological response doesn't so much suggest as demand, or perhaps insist, really.  
  
"Oh," he breathes, and he grins, even though that's all the breath he had left.  
  
Rose wriggles her fingers at him, their forever invitation, the-Doctor-and-Rose, them. He reaches out, risks it all, takes her hand. This is why they fight: to come out stronger on the other side.

* * *


End file.
